Original subtitles

- We can't let you go without asking you

about this perennial talk of reunion.

- I didn't know there was any talk of a reunion.

- [Anchor] Oh yes.

All Pink Floyd fans want you guys

to get together again.

Think it'll happen?

- No, it's not gonna happen.

["The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II]

- [Voiceover] For many, Pink Floyd is

the definitive album band,

with an expansive and inimitable back catalog of music

that stretches back to the mid 1960s.

Having not released any new material since 1994,

their last four albums, recorded over a 15-year period,

saw one of the most commercially successful acts in music

endure a turbulent change in leadership and style,

whilst enhancing the element of spectacle

in their ever-impressive live shows.

Yet a very bitter and public breakdown

in communications between the creative forces

of Roger Waters and David Gilmour

sealed the eventual fate of the band.

With the building of The Wall, making The Final Cut,

having a Momentary Lapse of Reason,

and ringing The Division Bell,

Pink Floyd's final throes saw their death and resurrection,

leaving the band and fans on an indefinite hiatus

before a surprise reunion in 2005

in view of the watching world

went some of the way to burying the hatchet.

- The larger point about Pink Floyd's story

is that it's a very sad one,

and it's not just that Roger Waters

had to take over a band in order to express his issues,

it's the wider story of what it takes

for a rock band to be successful.

Pink Floyd's a perfect example of a band

who made it up as they went along,

and I think you cannot underestimate

the importance of the others in that,

particularly David Gilmour and Rick Wright,

because I think they brought

a huge musicality, a lot of melody to Waters' ideas.

Waters might've had the concept, he might've had the ideas,

but the other two definitely had the tunes.

- Gilmour is very much a musician's musician

and he was able to be the yin to Roger Waters' yang.

They really do complement each other well,

and you can see from his subsequent solo material

that Waters has always struggled to be

quite as melodic as Gilmour enabled him to be,

while Gilmour has always struggled to be

as lyrically competent as Waters was.

- You can see that they made their best work

when the tension between them was creative.

When the tension became destructive,

you end up with an album that's

as unsatisfying as The Final Cut.

So the signs were there.

Everybody could read it

except, paradoxically, it seems

Gilmour and Waters themselves.

[audience applause]

- [Voiceover] By the late 1970s, Pink Floyd had reached

an unprecedented level of critical and commercial success.

But the classic lineup of Roger Waters,

David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright

were beginning to show signs of great tension.

The band were not unfamiliar with upheaval,

having already dealt with

the breakdown and eventual departure

of lead inspiration Syd Barrett in 1968.

The change had enforced not only a shift in creative input,

but also in sonic output,

seeing the group's sound move from pastoral psychedelic rock

into more progressive, electronic textures.

This sonic evolution and a strong collaborative effort

from the remaining members

eventually culminated in the album Dark Side of the Moon.

The record's huge success broke the band

in the United States,

and its impact was consolidated

by a follow-up album, Wish You Were Here,

a tribute to the long-departed Barrett.

Despite their breakthrough success,

the stress of touring and the pressure to appease

an increasingly mainstream audience

was starting to tell.

The creative duties were transferring

from collaboration to something more individual,

as Roger Waters gradually became

the dominant voice within the band.

And by the time Pink Floyd released

their 10th studio album Animals,

it was clear the cracks in the group were spreading fast.

- The Animals album was recorded in '76

and released in January '77,

and recorded mostly in London.

The material was in the main part left over

from what had been the Wish You Were Here album.

There were some songs that were played

live in concert under different titles

and with different lyrics

but evolved into "Dogs" and "Sheep"

and they were mostly written by Waters.

So the band got together again and assembled an album

out of what they had then with some additional material.

♪ You gotta keep one eye

♪ Looking over your shoulder

♪ You know, it's gonna get harder

♪ Harder, harder

♪ As you get older

♪ Yeah, and in the end you'll pack up

♪ And fly down south

♪ Hide your head in the sand

♪ Just another sad old man

♪ All alone and dying of cancer ♪

- I think what is interesting about Animals

is although it's coming off the back

of a couple of very successful, classic Pink Floyd records,

it has a sort of fearlessness about it.

It seems to attack its subject with teeth

that we perhaps haven't seen on earlier Pink Floyd records.

It might seem a bit unreasonable

and I know it was terribly criticized at the time

for being a bit bleak and little bit negative

in its subject matter,

but at least it's got a bit of fire about it.

- It's very much Waters-driven

although Gilmour played a large part in the music on "Dogs."

The album was bookended by "Pigs on the Wing

"Part One and Part Two,"

which are a little love song from Waters

to his then new partner Caroline.

Because of the way the songs were divided up,

two short songs credited to Waters,

there was some tension over the fact that Waters

was getting more money in his royalties than Gilmour was,

and that's one of the seeds of the dispute between them,

and I'm pretty sure that at the time Waters thought

that he was making more of a contribution.

♪ Big man, pig man

♪ Haha, charade you are

♪ Woo

- Animals was the first album on which you hear

a dysfunctional band beginning to fall apart.

Roger Waters is

playing quite a bullying role already.

If you look at the credits for Animals, Waters dominates.

I think Gilmour appears once.

In retrospect, we can see this is the beginning

of Waters taking over the band,

being the voice of Pink Floyd.

- Gilmour did contribute perhaps a bit less so,

Mason less still,

and you'll notice there's no writing contribution

from Nick Wright on the album,

who at the time started to deal

with some of his own personal difficulties,

and indeed Gilmour was occupied at the time

by the birth of his first child,

so personal differences, personal difficulties

outside of the band.

- I didn't really like much, a lot of it,

a lot of the music on the album.

I have to say I didn't fight very hard to put my stuff on,

and I didn't have anything to put on.

I mean, I played on it and I think I played well,

but I didn't contribute to the writing of it.

And I think also Roger was kind of not letting me do that.

This was the start of the whole ego thing

I think from the band.

Animals.

- The band had got to a point where they'd

been together now for the best part of 10 years

and little things that may have been minor irritations

when you're in your late teens/early 20s

had probably become quite serious problems

by the time they were all in their 30s.

- The band have spoken openly about the fact

that they felt that once they'd done

Dark Side of the Moon and its mammoth tour,

everything changed.

The audiences were no longer quiet and respectful.

They would cheer and holler

or set off fireworks during performances.

They were treated differently by record companies

who saw them as obviously as a cash cow.

And no matter what they did, they were never really

going to have something that was as monumental

as Dark Side of the Moon has turned out to be.

- [Voiceover] With internal divisions and conflicts

threatening to boil over,

Pink Floyd persevered.

Driven predominantly by Waters,

Animals demonstrated a distinct downturn in subject matter.

And even though commercially strong,

critics met the album with caution

and on occasion derision.

Nevertheless, fans eager to witness their musical heroes,

flocked to the supporting tour.

With Waters' ambition, their theatrical live shows

had grown from the simple oil and light projections

of the UFO Club

to gigantic arena spectacles designed to draw attention

away from the band towards the live production.

In the Flesh would be the first tour

in which Floyd played a number of stadium dates

in addition to their arena shows.

But as their music had graduated

to fill these vast, cavernous venues,

their relationship with the fans had altered.

The lively and often distracted behavior of audiences

enraged certain members of Pink Floyd,

until one night in Montreal, events took a worrying turn.

- I was on the latter date of the tour.

The audiences were very loud and boisterous,

and would cheer and holler even during quiet passages,

and this really started to get to the band,

particularly to Roger Waters.

- That whole tour was a real drag, those stadium gigs.

That's the only tour we ever did

where we did lots of big stadiums,

and I really hated it, I hated it.

And Montreal was the final straw.

It's the famous story now

that I ended up spitting at some guy

who was in the front row there and I thought

"Jesus Christ, have I been brought to this?"

- I think it sums up where his head was at at the time.

- Waters realized what he'd done

and felt quite disgusted with himself

that these people had paid money and obviously adored him,

and their behavior upset him,

and his reaction clearly was hostile to them.

- I became rather disenchanted with it

and thought that too much was lost.

What was gained from having

a large congregation of people communing together,

which is what a stadium at its best is,

was being lost in a sort of watering down

of the way the message got across to the audience.

- Now, after the gig, he has an accident,

some kind of backstage tomfoolery.

He cuts his foot, so he has to be taken

to the emergency room to kind of get it patched up,

and the story is that he's in the back of the car

with Bob Ezrin, the producer who produced The Wall

and a friend of Bob Ezrin's who was actually a psychiatrist,

and again, this is the tale that Waters says

that he started talking about the idea

of building a wall between his audience,

which obviously Ezrin was fascinated by

and so was the psychiatrist.

- So he went away and spent obviously a lot of time thinking

about what he'd become, how did it happen,

whether it's what he really wanted,

and the consequence obviously of all

the success he's had in previous years,

and he started to conceive of the artist

as being alienated from his audience

and by virtue of his lifestyle,

being alienated from the people around him,

his family, his partner, and so on,

and alienated from life at large, really.

- Out of that, came this theatrical idea

of building a wall across the front of the stage

to express that sense of alienation and separation

that I had between me and them.

- When someone says "Well, in the first half of a show,

"we're going to build this fucking great wall

"across the front of the stage

"and we're gonna be behind it playing

"and the audience are gonna be

"in front of it looking at it,"

you sort of go "Hang on a minute."

[voices chattering]

♪ Out there

- [Voiceover] As a way of coping

with the internal and external alienation

Waters was feeling,

he formed the narrative for a new album, The Wall,

the story of washed up rock and roll star Pink,

who descends into isolation through the gradual breakdown

in his various relationships,

a character that bore a strong resemblance

to Waters himself.

♪ So ya

♪ Thought ya

♪ Might like to

♪ Go to the show

♪ To feel that warm thrill of confusion

♪ That space cadet glow

- Waters presented to me two ideas,

one for The Wall and one for what became

his first sort of proper solo album,

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

Apparently the band were all totally agreed

that they should do The Wall,

while their manager apparently wanted them

to do The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

But, you know, the idea was very, very rough at this point,

and I think as the rest of the band said

that they weren't bringing that many ideas

to the table themselves,

so it's kind of like "This is what we're going to do"

and there wasn't a lot of other choice.

- I played them a whole bunch of music

and told them about the idea at the same time.

I had a bunch of demos of the songs,

and I think they could see that it was

potentially quite an exciting project.

- [Voiceover] At the end of the 1970s,

as The Wall continued to develop,

Britain, a country plagued by strikes

and crippling unemployment,

was branded the "sick man of Europe."

The punk movement had been central

in reflecting the anger and hopelessness of the time,

and its anti-establishment spirit

had not been lost on Roger Waters.

♪ God save the queen

♪ The fascist regime

♪ They made you a moron

♪ A potential H-bomb

- Directly or indirectly, Roger Waters has been

influenced by punk here.

I mean, first off, there is the infamous incident

on the '77 tour when he spat in the face of a fan.

Spitting was a sort of image of punk.

Johnny Rotten is walking around wearing

an "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt.

And Roger Waters, whether in direct response to this

or a more indirect response,

comes up with a petulant, teenage theme

that he's taking here,

and it's almost as if he is

spitting at everybody who is in direct range.

So although sonically there is nothing in the record

that derives from the punk revolution,

I think thematically he's going to strike a chord

with a fairly wide audience, and a young audience,

and he's going to prevent Pink Floyd

from going the way of Emerson, Lake & Palmer

and some of the other dinosaurs.

- [Voiceover] Waters' design for The Wall

was not just an idea for an album,

but a concept for an entire show,

filled with characters and events,

a sprawling scheme that met no opposition

from a band that were all but out of ideas.

The project required refining,

and given the frosty relationships within the group,

someone would also be needed to act as go-between.

The role fell to 29-year-old producer Bob Ezrin.

- Bob Ezrin's contribution to The Wall

is incredibly important.

One of the first things he did was he wrote a treatment,

like you would for a film, of the album

because Waters' demo was very patchy,

the narrative skipped about

in a nonlinear and unclear fashion,

so he basically wrote a script

which apparently ran to 40 pages,

so a considerable piece of effort,

just explaining what the story was

so everybody knew where everything fitted into it.

- It was a big decision for Pink Floyd

to bring in an outside producer

because before that, they tended to produce themselves,

and early on, they'd worked with EMI's in-house producers

and their engineers,

but they were used to doing things themselves,

and he was very much Roger Waters' guy.

But I think what he did do was act

as a great mediator between them.

- I think he found the reality to be quite different

from what he'd been sold by Roger Waters.

I think Waters had brought him in

saying "You'll find Dave Gilmour and the rest of them

"are very, very difficult"

and he basically said to Ezrin

"I don't want to talk to them.

"I want to have as little to do with them as possible.

"You're there as my go-between."

But of course, what Ezrin then found

was that Gilmour was a very easygoing chap to work with

and all the difficulties were by and large

coming from Roger's side.

- It might be argued that if it hadn't been for Ezrin,

The Wall would never have got completed.

In the same way that Gilmour walked out

on the sessions of The Final Cut,

it might well have happened much earlier on The Wall

had there not been a mediating influence.

- So he has this role within the dynamic of the band

and the dynamic of working in the studio.

He has a second role, which is of course

about the sound of the album.

And so he comes to work with Pink Floyd

with a track record that includes

Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Kiss.

So he's steeped in this sort of

American stadium rock sound,

and I think you can hear quite strongly

the influence of that, which he brings to The Wall.

♪ Billion dollar baby

♪ Rubber little lady, slicker than a weasel

♪ Grimy as an alley, loves me like no other

♪ Billion dollar baby

- The influence of Ezrin on

Pink Floyd's commercial alertness is immeasurable.

It was his idea to send Nick Mason and Dave Gilmour

into a disco to listen to disco music.

I don't think they would've got 'round to doing that

off their own bat.

So obviously, the influence of someone

with a commercial head

will have made immense difference

to the development of the project.

- [Voiceover] And the difference was instantly apparent,

as "Another Brick in the Wall" became

Pink Floyd's first single in over a decade.

♪ We don't need no education

♪ We don't need no thought control ♪

- The big, significant thing about The Wall initially

was before the album came out, they released a single.

It was the first one they'd done since about 1968,

certainly in the UK.

They'd done promotional singles in America.

But that was a huge sea change for Floyd.

- It was never intended to be a single.

It was just one of those motifs

in Waters' 85-minute rock opera

that cropped up a couple of times.

And it's a classic Waters trick, actually.

What it is, is a drone,

which is a pedal point bass line

which doesn't move, there's no harmonic movement really,

and a three-note melodic motif,

and it's the sort of thing he would do quite a lot.

For instance,

[playing simple piano melody]

Set the controls to the heart of the song,

same thing, a drone and a three-note melody,

a three-note motif, which just repeats.

Same thing with this, with "Another Brick in the Wall."

Another different, different key,

but the same, and minor as well.

[playing simple piano melody]

Now, these aren't tunes as such.

They're just little nuggets, little motifs

that will pepper the piece throughout.

And I think it was Ezrin who suggested doubling it up

and putting a disco beat on it,

and making it into a commercial thing.

The addition of the kids' vocals

made it into a commercial work, and a single.

Now, Pink Floyd would've resisted that at the time.

Singles were exactly what Pink Floyd were not about.

They were one of the original albums bands,

but I think when faced with something

as seductive and irresistible as that,

that they couldn't refuse.

♪ No dark sarcasm in the classroom

♪ Teachers leave those kids alone ♪

- [Voiceover] "Another Brick in the Wall"

provided Pink Floyd with a global, number one success.

However, in the UK, the release attracted criticism,

as members of the government

claimed the track was anti-education.

Roger Waters disagreed,

offering that the intended message had been missed.

♪ All in all you're just another brick in the wall ♪

- It's important to remember that

"Another Brick in the Wall"

isn't anti-school or anti-education,

as it's often been portrayed.

It's very much Waters being anti-bad education

and bad schools.

Waters really is an old school socialist.

His parents were very left wing, members of CND.

His father, who ironically died in World War II,

had been a pacifist and only fought it

because he was opposed to what the Nazis were doing.

- There was some flack in some of the papers

from people who had only heard that single on the radio

and didn't know anything about the piece

or anything about me or anything about The Wall

or what it was about or anything else.

I remember a piece saying it was obscene

and it was this, that, and the other,

and I thought "Well, you prat,

"you haven't done your research.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

♪ There's no way

♪ I'm gonna let go

- [Voiceover] All the while The Wall was in development,

the tensions between the members of Pink Floyd increased,

and the relationship between Waters

and the rest of the band was deteriorating.

In the period between Animals and The Wall,

both Richard Wright and David Gilmour

had released solo albums,

while Nick Mason had also broadened

his activities beyond the band,

producing punk outfit The Damned's Music for Pleasure.

With minds often focused elsewhere,

a dispute regarding the creative direction of Floyd

and the level of input from individual members

caused friction, particularly between Waters and Gilmour.

- To understand what happened between Gilmour and Waters,

and indeed the rest of the band,

it takes a great deal of reading between the lines.

People's recollection so many years on

are contradictory sometimes or sometimes vague,

and there are things that they clearly won't talk about.

But it's quite obvious that while Waters

thought that he was carrying the band,

the other band members thought that he was

happy to do as much as he was doing

and that their contributions were still significant.

And clearly there was a difference of opinion about that

and it's a pity that they didn't sit down

and talk about it in a grown-up manner

and resolve those issues,

a pity for the rest of us who would've benefited

from the resultant work.

- Well, it had started on Animals but this where

the divide between the two of them really starts.

And it's very easy to see

the duality between them in terms of the traditional

sort of good cop/bad cop, nice cop/nasty cop.

I think it's a little more complicated than that.

Waters is certainly developing serious

signs of megalomania at this point.

- What we can be clear about is that Waters felt

he was at the lead of Pink Floyd

and that without him there was no Pink Floyd,

and the other band members clearly disagreed,

as eventually did the courts.

- But, you know, I think he had high demands of himself

and he expected the rest of the band

to come up to those standards.

So it wasn't as though he was demanding anything of them

that he didn't demand of himself.

And Gilmour did not come up with material

in time for the deadline.

I mean, he does eventually.

They resurrect a couple of songs

that were rejects from his solo album.

But you can imagine why Waters was frustrated,

which isn't to excuse some of his behavior,

but you can see why he felt other members of the band

were not necessarily pulling their weight

at this point in time.

- You know, my confidence in my own lyric writing

has not always been that high

and Roger showed a very strong desire to be the lyricist,

and we all lazily allowed that to happen.

- One, I didn't have any material to offer.

David didn't really either.

And Roger had begun to think

"Well, I'm the writer of this band,

"and I don't want anyone else to write.

"I'm going to become the..."

It was the start of that whole thing.

So I'm to blame for not having anything

and he's to blame for not encouraging anything to come.

- "Oh, he wouldn't let us write."

What?

You know, that's just so sort of stupid.

I'm desperate for people to write, always,

always, always, always, always.

- [Voiceover] The miscommunication between friends continued

and Rick Wright, already dealing

with serious personal issues,

was about to take the fall.

- Rick Wright had a huge impact on Floyd musically,

but personality-wise, he was quite gentle,

so he was not the alpha male in the equation.

And I think at that point, he had issues

in his own personal life,

which he talked about before he died,

issues with his marriage and so on.

There is other stuff that went on,

which the band have always remained

very tight-lipped about, even now.

But I think there was an issue

that he'd kind of run out of road.

- Rick just didn't seem like he wanted

to take very much part in it

and it was kind of a frustrating thing for all of us.

- Rick was probably split between

a feeling of "My God, I don't need anymore of this"

and the sheer unpleasantness of Roger

trying to boot him out.

- The issue was that they weren't going to have

the album completed in time for Christmas.

EMI wanted it for Christmas, and it was a huge bonus

if they delivered it before Christmas,

which in the light of their financial problems

was obviously a big sweetener.

And I think a decision was taken by Waters

that we will have to go to America,

we will have to use session players.

We're not going to get this thing done unless we do this.

- I was under a certain amount of pressure

to finish this, finish the project off,

and I tried to get Rick to cooperate with me

to achieving that end and he declined,

and so our ways parted.

- The story is that Waters gave Rick Wright

a timetable he had to work with.

He'd agreed a family holiday

and that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

The issue was that he left.

- When a band's been together for so long,

the decent and reasonable thing to do is go to the guy

who's not pulling his weight or contributing and say

"Look, there's a problem here.

"What's the problem?

"We can work this out."

But no.

Because of the way Roger was behaving at the time

and who he was,

you couldn't do that.

- I read all this stuff about "Oh, Roger did this

"and Roger threw Rick out, and Roger was this

"and he was this, and that, and the other"

and I think I've passed the point

in my path, down my road

and through all my psychotherapy and whatever

that I no longer feel a strong urge to defend myself

or to take part in that conversation.

- [Voiceover] Wright agreed to leave the band

but was determined to complete the album

and also take part in the supporting tour,

to which the other members agreed.

The Wall was finally released in November 1979.

Roger Waters' concept of the rock star in sharp decline

had been realized,

and even though its creation had broken the band,

his creative drive had not surrendered.

Throughout its recording, both Waters and Ezrin

had been plotting a spectacular show

to complement the music,

and it was to this that their minds now turned.

The show Waters envisaged was a rock opera like no other

and took live performance to the next level.

With a gigantic wall covering the stage

and a backdrop of dark and vividly imaginative

animations from Gerald Scarfe,

The Wall tour was a breathtaking triumph

that stunned Floyd's loyal fans.

- As the album is a culmination of all the techniques

and styles that the band had used

over the preceding decade or so,

so the concert was a culmination

of all the different things that they'd done

in live performances.

Back projected films, giant puppets,

surround sound going right 'round the auditorium.

So it was quite a natural progression in that sense,

although the audacity of building the wall across the stage

and hiding the band behind it was clearly new.

I think the band were a little bit

shocked about that concept,

but once they understood what it was about,

then they realized that they actually did,

it actually needed to be done in order to tell the story.

- At the time, it was unprecedented,

a show of that scale,

but the sheer cost of putting it on

meant that they couldn't tour it

to the extent that perhaps they may have wanted to do.

It really is the beginning of what you saw in the '80s,

with huge productions by bands like Rolling Stones,

and Queen, and every band that came, Prince,

every group that came back and started doing stadiums.

The Wall is the beginning of that.

It's that point at which musicians realized

that with a bit of corporate sponsorship and so on

just how big you could go.

- [Voiceover] Despite the major success

of both the album and live show,

tensions within the band remained.

But however volatile the relationship

between Waters and Gilmour had been during recording,

it was a collaboration that arguably

produced some of Floyd's best work.

- The tensions in the band

at the time The Wall was recorded

certainly have an effect on the music.

There are some slight references in the lyrics,

but the overall angsty feel can't have been

anything but enriched by the tensions within the band.

- They are barely on speaking terms,

and yet some of the best moments on the record

come from the collaboration

of Roger Waters and David Gilmour.

Foremost amongst those is "Comfortably Numb,"

which I think for a lot of Floyd fans

is to them what "Stairway to Heaven"

is to Led Zeppelin fans.

It's this sort of, you know, the totem track.

- The chord sequence of "Comfortably Numb"

was one of the few offerings that Gilmour

brought to the project,

and I think it was Ezrin who persuaded Waters

to engage with it and actually try to do something with it.

- I think Ezrin plays a key role, by the way, in this.

I mean, possibly without Ezrin, there wouldn't have been

any Gilmour material at all on The Wall

and we would've lost "Comfortably Numb."

- And what we have

is the most musically rich thing on the record.

♪ Hello

♪ Is there anybody in there

♪ Just nod if you can hear me

♪ Is there anyone at home

♪ Come on now

♪ I hear you're feeling down

♪ Well I can ease the pain

♪ And get you on your feet again ♪

- The verse of "Comfortably Numb" is a classic

minor key Pink Floyd sequence.

[playing piano chord sequence]

Now that functions as the verse.

So you have the sinister doctor

asking "Hello, is there anybody out there?"

but it also functions as the big guitar fade solo.

When it comes in for the bridge, we go to the major.

[playing piano chord sequence]

It's all very reassuring.

[playing piano chord sequence]

But then, where do we go?

[playing piano chord sequence]

Which muddies the waters a bit.

We don't quite know what's happening.

We wouldn't if we're in this woozy state

and we've been given something to make us comfortably numb.

♪ When I was a child, I had a fever

♪ My hands felt just like two balloons

♪ Now I've got that feeling once again

♪ I can't explain, you would not understand

♪ This is not how I am

♪ I have become comfortably numb ♪

- It's tempting to interpret

the two distinct personalities at work on that record.

Prodding, sinister verses, Mr. Waters.

Soothing, delightfully numbing, actually,

choruses by Gilmour.

- It is one of the highlights not just of this album

but of Pink Floyd's career.

- [Voiceover] With only a smattering

of Gilmour's contributions on the album,

The Wall provided an insight into the complexities

of Roger Waters' own psyche,

and no more so than on the track "Nobody Home."

♪ Got a little black book with my poems in

♪ I've got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in

♪ When I'm a good dog, they sometimes throw me a bone in ♪

- I think what's interesting about "Nobody Home"

is it seems to encapsulate every musician on the road,

a particularly isolated and tormented one

in this particular case,

but I think it's all about "I'm here, you're there,

"and I can't get a hold of you.

"I've got all of this.

"I've got all this stuff that money's bought me

"that doesn't seem to mean very much.

"These are my adornments,

"but I can't even get through to the people I love."

So "Nobody Home" works on that level.

He can't get through to the people he loves.

But it also works on the idea that

when you stack up everything that he's got,

his perm, and his boots, and his silver spoon,

and he still picks up the phone

and there's still nobody home,

he's talking about himself.

There's neither anybody home there

nor is there anybody home here.

♪ I've got electric light

♪ I've got second sight

♪ Got amazing powers of observation

♪ And that is how I know

♪ When I try to get through

♪ On the telephone to you

♪ There'll be nobody home

- I think what makes it doubly effective

is although the tune itself, as ever with Waters,

is not the most interesting thing about it,

he does set this litany of emptiness

to quite an elegaic chord sequence,

which reflects hymns, reflects gospel music.

And it's beautifully arranged as well.

It's got a lovely, warm, swelling kind of arrangement,

which really underlines the isolation of it all.

[playing chord sequence]

So that's very gospel-y.

And then you get this lovely moment here later.

[playing chord sequence]

Which is straight out of church.

So the whole thing has a sort of grandeur.

There's a grandeur in the desperation,

and I think this is what Waters can do really, really well.

- I think by this stage Roger Waters has developed

a grand vision in keeping with the rather

grand self-image that he has adopted at this point.

And the theatricality, I think he's moving

in a slightly different way from that kind of

David Bowie theatricality we'd had before,

which was very sort of pop

and it's moving more in the direction of grand opera,

certainly of Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

And of course, that is a direction which he does

end up following and attempting to write

a serious opera later in his career.

- [Voiceover] The final brick

in The Wall's overall construction

was the creation of a film directed by Alan Parker

and starring Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldof.

With the rest of Pink Floyd sidelined,

the movie version of the stage show of the album

was very much Roger Waters' attempt

to crown his grand achievement.

Yet the production was beset with problems,

and Waters was unhappy with Parker's

execution of the project.

It left an appropriately sour taste

in what had been a bittersweet masterpiece.

♪ If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes

♪ You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise ♪

[explosion]

[men shouting]

[explosion]

[explosion]

- [Voiceover] The Wall had been

a mammoth undertaking for Pink Floyd,

and its success saw the group reassemble

in 1982 to record The Final Cut.

Without the influence and mediation of Bob Ezrin,

and missing Rick Wright for the first time

on a Pink Floyd record,

Waters relentlessly persevered.

Still influenced and obsessed by the injustice of war

and the death of his father,

the writer and bass player was inspired to address

both the Falklands conflict and the arrival

of Margaret Thatcher's conservative government,

and creating a heavily political album,

which ultimately would drive a permanent wedge

between himself and the rest of the band.

♪ Should we scream

♪ What happened to the post war dream ♪

- By the time it came to make

the next Pink Floyd album, The Final Cut,

there were definitely huge cracks appearing in the band.

The Final Cut always feels in some ways

like the beginning of Roger Waters' solo career.

There are many elements of it that you think

you could be listening to a Roger Waters solo album.

- When the band came to record an album,

which was originally going to be called Spare Bricks,

made of the bits and pieces from The Wall,

tracks that had been re-recorded for The Wall,

tracks that had been excised from the original album,

tracks that had been specially recorded for the film,

they realized that it would just be a mishmash.

It wouldn't match the normal quality,

it wouldn't tell a story,

and it would just look like scraping the barrel.

So they decided instead to produce another proper album

using some of the material that had been

discarded from The Wall,

some of the tunes for instance,

but not actually using the material from the film.

Waters obviously came up with this story

based around what had happened since the film came out

around the Falklands War,

around the political situation in Britain.

There are lots of references to Thatcher,

references to the Cold War,

references to Israel, and clearly to the Falklands War.

Gilmour, on the other hand, was quite opposed

to re-using some of the discarded material from The Wall.

He felt it had been discarded

because of its quality not being sufficient

and therefore to re-use it was lowering the standard,

and he said since that there are only three tracks on there

that considers worthy of the name Pink Floyd.

- I felt that Roger was resurrecting tracks

that we had not accepted for The Wall album,

and I did say to him "They weren't good enough then.

"Why are they good enough now?"

It got so difficult that Roger wanted me

to not have a say in what was going on

on the production side of the album.

So after a lot of arguing,

and hemming and hawing, and soul searching,

I agreed to come off the production credits.

♪ Brezhnev took Afghanistan

♪ And Begin took Beirut

♪ Galtieri took the Union Jack

♪ And Maggie over lunch one day

♪ Took a cruiser with all hands

♪ Apparently, to make him give it back ♪

- They're not what I would regard

and I suspect most Pink Floyd fans would regard

as characteristic Floyd material.

They are overtly political,

which means they're not quite as mysterious and enigmatic,

which had been trademarks of the Floyd throughout.

They're a lot more literal and very, very personal.

- I think another sticking point

for the others in the band, which was obviously

just David Gilmour and Nick Mason at this point,

was that again it was Waters returning

to very autobiographical themes,

the death of his father, his feelings about war.

There's a lot of very heavy political sentiment on it,

particularly inspired by Margaret Thatcher,

who was of course prime minister at the time,

and also the Falklands War,

which was going on at that point.

I mean, Gilmour has always said that he

didn't disagree with the sentiment,

but he just felt that it was overdone on an album,

that he wasn't convinced that the place for it

was on a Pink Floyd album.

- The whole album speaks of a man who is only interested

in one way and one way of thinking,

and that's his way.

Waters has every right to say that.

He's got his own history.

If he wants to turn childhood hurt

into an ongoing onslaught onto political leaders,

then that's his right.

He can do that, but I think to do it

within the context of a band is very difficult.

♪ Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

♪ Reagan and Haig

♪ Mr. Begin and friend

♪ Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly

♪ Mr. Brezhnev and party

♪ The ghost of McCarthy

♪ And the memories of Nixon

♪ And now, adding colour,

♪ a group of anonymous Latin- American

♪ Meat packing glitterati

♪ Did they expect us to treat them with any respect

♪ They can polish their medals and sharpen their smiles

♪ And amuse themselves playing games for awhile

♪ Boom boom, bang bang

♪ Lie down you're dead

- The politics of The Final Cut are not terribly subtle.

This is bile-filled hatred a lot of the time.

Politicians are simply corrupt warmongers

and they all need to be gathered up

in a care home and eliminated.

Now that's pretty extreme stuff,

and you can see why Gilmour couldn't quite get behind

something as extreme as that.

- It's an album that you feel like

you're being hit over the head the whole time.

There's some great stuff on it

but there is this sense of "Just get out of my face,

"just for a moment."

And there's not a lot of that.

It's a very relentless record.

- [Voiceover] A damning reflection of the breakdown

in communication on The Final Cut

was the limited contribution from David Gilmour,

only really having a significant role

on the track "Not Now John."

Having provided a musical foil

for Roger Waters' lyrics and concepts for so long,

his lack of input was highly conspicuous.

♪ So fuck all that

♪ We've gotta get on with these

♪ Gotta get on with these

- A thing that stands out about it

is that Gilmour doesn't, you don't feel

his presence on that album as much as you do on the others.

He's playing on it, he's actually excellent.

There are two or three really good songs on there,

but there is definitely a sense that by that point

I think Gilmour had run out of steam with Waters.

It was a very, very difficult working relationship,

and he'd sort of taken his attitude as like

"Well, I'll play guitar when you want me to,

"but I'm not going to do very much more than that."

- Perhaps it's telling that the only vocal he's got

is on "Not Now John"

and what does he say?

"Fuck all that" I think is the phrase.

You can read a myriad of things into that.

I suspect "Fuck all that" pretty much sums up

his attitude to Roger Waters at this point.

♪ Not now John, we've gotta get on with the film show

♪ Gotta get on, gotta get on

♪ Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow

♪ End of the rainbow

♪ Who cares what it's about as long as the kids go

♪ As long as the kids go

♪ So not now John, we've gotta get on with the show ♪

- I think what's significant about "Not Now John"

is you have a very extreme lyric

and it's sung not by Waters, but by Gilmour,

who really, really lays into it.

And I think that it's indicative of how supportive

Gilmour was trying to be.

Gilmour always said he never wanted to stop Roger Waters

expressing what he needed to express

and in fact he was always trying to help him

express what he wanted to express,

and that's never more clear than on "Not Now John."

One's put in mind really of when John Lennon wanted

to record "Ballad of John and Yoko"

and asked Paul McCartney to help him out

and off they went and they did it.

I think that's the difference between the two characters.

You can't imagine Lennon doing the same for McCartney.

In the same way, you can't really imagine

Waters doing the same for Gilmour.

- I think Gilmour hates this set of songs.

But again, he's got nothing better to offer.

So when Roger Waters calls his bluff and says

"Well, if you hate this album so much,

"I tell you what, we won't call it a Pink Floyd album,

"we'll call it a Roger Waters album,"

Gilmour says "Oh, no you don't."

So he's in a slightly difficult position here.

It's sort of put up or shut up time.

- It was dreadful, really.

It was dreadful, it's the not the way

a band should make records

and I think we all thought that.

Roger certainly thought it,

because he left the band shortly afterwards.

- [Voiceover] The Final Cut was released

to the public in March 1983,

and despite its different sound and dark political edge,

the album went to number one on the UK charts,

something both Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall

had failed to achieve.

It received mixed reviews from critics,

while "Not Now John" was released as an edited single

and accompanied by a short promotional film

featuring four of the album tracks.

But by then, the rift in Pink Floyd

had reached insurmountable proportions,

and no supporting tour was scheduled.

The Final Cut, as it turned out, was the final straw.

David Gilmour, anticipating a future without Roger Waters,

recorded his second solo album, About Face,

released in 1984.

- By the time Gilmour recorded About Face,

his 1984 solo album,

it's safe to assume that he realized

his partnership with Waters was effectively over,

and it seems to be him putting a toe in the water

to see whether he can forge a solo career

separate to Pink Floyd.

The album is more heavily promoted,

there are singles from it,

there are singles on picture disc and 12 inch singles

and all the usual paraphernalia

about somebody making a career out of their album.

Unfortunately for Gilmour, his tour to support the album

wasn't a great success.

His third British concert in Birmingham

had an audience of about 200.

But it looks as though he had a stab at a solo career

and realized he was never going to be able

to emulate what he'd been able to do

under the Pink Floyd banner.

- [Voiceover] While Gilmour was trying

to reinvent himself as a solo artist,

Roger Waters recorded and released his own solo effort,

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

Having been discarded in favor of The Wall

several years earlier,

the album continued Waters' theatrical, conceptual style,

although a supporting tour in which he

recruited Eric Clapton as part of his backing band

somewhat backfired when Clapton began to get

more appreciation than Waters during some of the shows.

♪ A Salvation Army band played

♪ And the children drank lemonade ♪

- [Voiceover] Alongside About Face,

Gilmour also kept his hand in the wider music scene.

Having discovered Kate Bush back in 1976,

he maintained his interested in working with new acts

by producing English folk rock band The Dream Academy,

featuring Nick Laird-Clowes.

He also provided backing or guest session work

for a host of other artists,

such as Grace Jones, Pete Townshend, and Supertramp.

♪ Ah hey ma ma mommy doo-din-nie-ya

♪ Ah hey ma ma ma hey-y-yah

♪ Life in a northern town

♪ Ah hey ma ma ma ma

- Supertramp were making our first album

after Roger Hodgson had left,

and we were making something really strong and solid,

and the album turned out to be called

Brother Where You Bound,

and we had this long 20-minute track.

It had solos from this and solos from that

and different passages,

and then there was one two- or three-minute slot

that we'd reserved for a guitar solo,

and I think we tried a couple of guitarists,

but it was there just waiting

and we were sitting around one night and we said,

somebody said "What we really need

"is like a Pink Floyd-type, Dave Gilmour-type solo.

"Now, who can do a Dave Gilmour-type solo?"

and everyone started going "Hmm, well."

And I think it was me, I think I said

"How about Dave Gilmour to do a Dave Gilmour-type solo?"

"Good idea, John."

So we called him up, and he said "Yeah,"

and he came to Rick in Rick's house and studio.

He just seemed to be very happy to be playing with us

and happy to get his sound and everything.

He set up in the studio with his footboard

and box of tricks or whatever

and plugged it in, tuned up,

and there was a Dave Gilmour sound.

All we had to do was just record it.

- I don't think it's just a question

that Dave Gilmour was a musician's musician

in his discovering Kate Bush

and producing The Dream Academy

and hanging out and supporting Pete Townshend

and appearing on a Wings album.

I don't think it's just that.

I think that, at his heart, Dave Gilmour

is a side man, he's a supportive, supporting player.

He likes to be around and helping people make good work.

That's part of his personality,

and that's part of his reason for making music.

That's not what Roger Waters does.

Roger Waters is a megalomaniac artist.

There's only one important thing

about what Roger Waters does

and it's what he does.

It's him, it's a complete expression of him.

Dave Gilmour never had that

until he was forced into it

by the absence of Roger Waters.

- [Voiceover] It was becoming clear

that the name of Pink Floyd carried far more weight

than any individual member.

So when Roger Waters released a statement

claiming that Pink Floyd were disbanding,

he was immediately countered by Gilmour,

who issued his own statement to the contrary.

- The argument was me rather pompously,

and I freely admit now erroneously,

suggesting that, because I wasn't in the band anymore,

that the brand and band name should be retired.

It wasn't up to me.

- [Voiceover] Roger Waters officially left Pink Floyd,

claiming he had been forced out by the remaining members.

A bitter legal wrangle ensued

as an air of uncertainty fell over the future of Floyd.

- I harbor some bad feelings about Roger

and about the procedure.

Yes, I do.

Wouldn't you?

I mean, it's not something that

I waste a lot of energy on, though,

and I don't have any desire to see him

or talk to him or any of that stuff.

But I'm not going to spend all my energy

trying to fight him.

No one is going to tell me that I'm not Pink Floyd

and that we can't do Pink Floyd anymore.

I mean, could you imagine it?

I can't imagine it.

- [Voiceover] Nick Mason and David Gilmour,

in a display of unity and defiance

against Roger Waters' jibes and accusations,

carried on under the name of Pink Floyd

and produced their 13th studio album,

A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Released in September 1987, the record,

which featured Rick Wright on keyboards,

offered a sound and style that was more recognizable

to fans of classic Floyd.

- It was inevitable that the record was going to sound

more like a traditional Pink Floyd record

because Roger Waters had gone.

Now, that's not to denigrate Roger Waters' contribution

to the uniqueness of Pink Floyd's sound,

but we saw really from The Wall onwards

that Waters was moving in a quite different direction.

Gilmour, for sound commercial reasons

if not sound artistic reasons,

conceived this album as a return

to the classic Pink Floyd sound.

- It would be very easy to portray

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

as a Gilmour solo album under the Pink Floyd banner.

Again, that's not something that it's possible

to be concrete about,

but it certainly has a lot more

of Gilmour's style and influence,

clearly because Waters isn't there.

Gilmour was the driving force behind it.

- On one level, there is a return

to that sort of dreamscape Pink Floyd approach

and the importance of the gargantuan guitar solo,

and atmosphere, and menace, and all that kind of stuff

unfolding in slow motion.

There is a return a bit to that.

So all that theatrical aspect of Waters' approach

with the vignettes and the linking sections

and the overall arcing concept,

that's been dropped,

and a return to sort of slightly older school Floyd values.

So on that level, yes, it does have something

in common with a Pink Floyd record.

- So that's the sound, but he really didn't have

the material to sustain it,

and that's where he misses Roger Waters.

- [Voiceover] Where Roger Waters appeared to be missed most

was within the lyrics and subject matter.

Although lead single "Learning to Fly"

performed well in the charts,

it lacked the depth and meaning of previous Floyd work.

♪ Into the distance a ribbon of black

♪ Stretched to the point of no turning back

♪ A flight of fancy on a windswept field ♪

- [Voiceover] Not only were criticisms aimed

at the collaborative efforts on the album,

with Gilmour being joined by several writers,

they were also directed towards the band's attempt

to sound contemporary.

With prog and classic rock having been

pushed out of the spotlight,

many questioned if Pink Floyd had a place

in the 1980s music scene.

♪ Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies

♪ Tongue tied and twisted just an earth bound misfit I ♪

- While listening to A Momentary Lapse of Reason,

you have to conclude that there wasn't a place

in the musical landscape for Pink Floyd in the 1980s

because the record sounds pretty hollow,

they attempt to fill the vacuum with bombast, really.

And so you'd imagine they would be anachronistic,

and yet, of course, the album sells millions

and there still clearly is a market out there

for anything under the Pink Floyd brand.

- [Voiceover] To maintain the Pink Floyd brand

yet also compete commercially in a changing market,

Gilmour's list of collaborators included

previously out of favor producer Bob Ezrin.

- Ezrin had obviously proved himself in the Pink Floyd camp

by helping The Wall to be pulled together.

So you can see precisely why Gilmour would

want him back on board.

But I think in the absence of

a genuine, eccentric creative for Ezrin to work with,

what we end up with is a slightly empty,

super slick product,

'cause for all of Gilmour's qualities,

he's not an auteur in the same way that Waters is.

He's not a great lyric writer.

He's not driven to write.

And Waters would say this himself:

Writers don't have a choice.

When you're a creative writer, you just write.

You don't say "Today I'm gonna write an album.

"Today I'm gonna write a Pink Floyd album."

And I think he recognized that Gilmour

wasn't that kind of guy.

- [Voiceover] Without the influence

and creativity of Waters,

Gilmour, Mason, and Ezrin struggled at first.

When their initial attempts were

deemed not good enough by the record company,

writing collaborators such as Anthony Moore were brought in.

This led to criticism regarding the validity of the album

as a Pink Floyd record.

- Gilmour had to recruit a bunch of professionals

to help him make the record,

which by definition means that it's becoming

a diluted entity anyway.

- I arrived at the studio

and, well, I know I had my soprano with me

'cause that's on the recording,

and I probably had my tenor and alto,

and it was very loose.

And I met Dave and I met the producer, Bob Ezrin,

and he said "Well, yeah, get set up,

"get your instruments out.

"We'll play this music."

The first track they played was "Terminal Frost."

He said try a soprano on it,

and I think I tried soprano and alto.

He said just blow along with the whole track,

and it's the instrumental track.

And we both agreed that soprano sounded good with it,

and so he said "Well, let's do a take."

Dave, to me, was very relaxed and calm

and just got his head into the music

and was really nice to me.

No problems with that.

From what I've read, well, I've never met Roger Waters,

but what I can imagine was that between the two of them

that Roger was the one with the angst

and Dave was the one that was a lot calmer.

- I mean, there's an argument to say

that actually there hasn't been

a Pink Floyd proper record since Animals.

You know, The Wall and The Final Cut

are clearly not Pink Floyd records in the old sense either,

but A Momentary Lapse of Reason certainly isn't

a Pink Floyd record.

It's a Dave Gilmour record with a bunch of professionals

trying to help him make a record

that sounds a bit like a Pink Floyd record.

- [Voiceover] And Waters was quick to issue

his thoughts on the new album.

Having goaded his former bandmates

during their acrimonious breakup,

his public pronouncements on the record

and its collaborative setup

were predictably damning.

- Roger Waters dismissed the album as a pretty fair forgery

and David Gilmour has since admitted some years later on

that Nick Mason only really played on one track

and that most of the keyboard parts

were done by him and not Rick Wright.

It's for the individual to decide whether or not

Waters is right and that album is a forgery,

but it certainly wasn't a collaborative Pink Floyd effort.

♪ Then drowned in desire

- [Voiceover] Nevertheless, with sales

of over 9,000,000 copies,

A Momentary Lapse of Reason reestablished Pink Floyd

and proved that there was life after Waters.

Gilmour, Mason, and Wright took the album to the road

on a record-breaking world tour.

♪ One slip and down the hole we fall

♪ It seems to take no time at all

♪ A momentary lapse of reason

♪ That binds a life for life

- [Voiceover] While Pink Floyd Mach 3

were playing to sell-out stadium crowds,

Roger Waters was taking his new solo album, Radio K.A.O.S.,

around the globe,

only playing to much smaller audiences

as he competed with his former bandmates.

- I remember one particular night I'm playing in Cincinnati

to about 2,000 people in a 6,000-seat arena

and they were playing the next day

to 60,000 people in a football stadium next door,

playing all my songs.

That was hard to take.

- [Gilmour] The viewpoint I suspect is that it's his work

that we are getting all the publicity from.

That's his viewpoint, is that he should be receiving

all these fans that are out there going to see us

should be going to see him and feels very aggrieved

that they don't understand that...

He said it publicly that he wishes

he'd done more publicity stuff

and that people understood him.

- [Voiceover] The Momentary Lapse of Reason tour

had restored confidence within the band

and culminated in a performance in Venice

which was broadcast to millions worldwide.

After such a struggle to keep the band alive,

Gilmour remained philosophical about his reasons

for maintaining Pink Floyd.

- It was a very difficult period.

You've sort of achieved all your

childhood's rock and roll dreams

when you've reached that sort of pinnacle

of Dark Side of the Moon,

and you have to really ask yourself

what you're still in it for.

And it was a tough time,

but I think in the end I came to the conclusion

that I was in it for the music more than for anything else,

and a conclusion which I haven't really changed.

In that separation, we lost something

and we gained something.

You always have some regrets about

losing a talented person, don't you?

- [Voiceover] In 1993, it was an older, wiser,

and more relaxed Pink Floyd that returned

to Gilmour's floating studio near Hampton Court

to record what would be their last album to date,

The Division Bell.

- When it was time to make The Division Bell,

Gilmour had a couple of years of

massively successful world tour behind him.

Also, huge sales of the last Pink Floyd album.

Not only that, but Roger Waters had agreed

to allow Gilmour, and Nick Mason, and Rick Wright

to carry on and be Pink Floyd.

So they're starting the album with

a completely different feeling.

- The Division Bell was far more of a collaborative effort.

It began with jamming sessions

with Gilmour, Mason, and Wright

on Gilmour's houseboat studio The Astoria

with other people, people like Guy Pratt,

who had been the touring bassist on the previous tour.

Just messing about, trying to come up with tunes,

and it's the first time that Rick Wright

has a writing contribution on a Pink Floyd album

for nearly 20 years since Wish You Were Here in 1975.

So that's a significant return to the fold for Rick Wright

and indicative of the fact that this was a Pink Floyd album

and not a Gilmour solo project under another name.

- Rick Wright has had an unexpected Renaissance

and makes a major contribution to this album.

So suddenly Dave Gilmour has got somebody

he can spark off again.

It's not Roger Waters, but Rick Wright is almost back to

the creative best that he had shown in the early 70s.

There's suddenly a sense of Pink Floyd being

a band again on this record,

which was really lacking

on the last record with Roger Waters

and the first record without Roger Waters.

- Although it is a collaborative effort,

it's clear that at this stage

Pink Floyd is being steered by David Gilmour,

perhaps not as autocratically as Waters

had steered it in the previous era,

but nevertheless there is a band leader

who is making the decisions

and deciding the direction of the band.

- I'm not really a control freak, I don't think.

But I like things to be done properly

and I suppose in the end I've become

a bit of a perfectionist.

In many of the stages I'm not,

but I've become a bit of a perfectionist,

but I don't see myself as being a control freak

in the way that other people,

like my predecessor in this band if you like, was.

- [Voiceover] As chief songwriter

and the main driving force behind the band,

Gilmour was forced to look within himself

for lyrical and thematic inspiration

in conceiving The Division Bell,

a process that he had publicly admitted

to finding very difficult.

- From what we know of the writing process

for the songs on The Division Bell,

it's clear that Gilmour had certain things

he wanted to say.

He was prepared to talk about in passing

his relationship with Roger Waters,

his relationship with his new wife, the world at large.

- The impetus behind this is that

Gilmour had got married again.

He was in a new relationship with Polly Samson,

who was a writer, a newspaper columnist,

and she wrote lyrics for the album.

And by his own admission, Gilmour had struggled

in the past with lyrics.

That's why he'd use outside lyric writers before.

And she came along and delivered lyrics,

which got the album moving.

- Well, we started off.

I went off to try and start writing lyrics, to France,

and my girlfriend Polly came with me

and she encouraged me.

She kept telling me to keep working,

to sit in front of that word processor and bash away.

But as these things do work, she got more and more involved

and I would say "Listen to this.

"What do you think of this?"

and she'd say "Well, that's crap" or "That's good"

and would come up with ideas herself

and gradually I had to face up to the fact

that she was properly contributing

and put it in some sort of proper order.

- But of course, that then opens up

a whole other can of worms

in terms of criticism of the record,

the idea of some Yoko Ono figure

meddling in the Pink Floyd.

That of course was the downside to that,

but there's no getting away from the fact

that her involvement in that record got it moving.

- [Voiceover] Gilmour's lyrical collaboration

with Polly Samson,

along with The Dream Academy's Nick Laird-Clowes,

finally allowed the Floyd frontman

to open up and express himself.

♪ Her love rains down on me as easy as the breeze

♪ I listen to her breathing

♪ It sounds like the waves on the sea

♪ I was thinking all about her

♪ Burning with rage and desire

♪ We were spinning into darkness

♪ The earth was on fire

♪ She could take it back

♪ She might take it back someday ♪

- Lyrically, the album does seem to address

issues of miscommunication,

human emotions, people's inability

to deal with their emotions and to confront issues,

which of course is something that's a big part of life

but also a very big part of the Pink Floyd story.

- In the same way that what happened with Syd Barrett

continued to resonate through David Gilmour's career

and indeed the rest of the band's,

what happened between him and Roger Waters

would resonate through his career.

There would never be a time when he could write an album

without thinking "What if Roger had been involved in this?"

That might've been a subconscious thought,

but it was always going to be there,

and I'm sure it's the same for Roger Waters as well.

It's the same for any partnership that's ended.

There I always the "What if?"

- It's ironic and apt in a way

that by the time Gilmour is making

what turns out to be the last Pink Floyd album,

he's grappling with one of Roger Waters' favorite themes,

which is connection, communication, reaching out,

getting beyond that distance between

one person and another person.

Songs like "Poles Apart" address that head on.

♪ Hey you

♪ Did you ever realize what you'd become

♪ And did you see

♪ That it wasn't only me you were running from ♪

- He also revises the Pink Floyd tradition

of singing about poor old Syd.

Syd gets a look in.

In fact, the first verse of "Poles Apart"

appears to be talking about a man

that he once knew and doesn't know anymore.

He was once a golden boy,

but whatever happened there?

And then the second verse, he appears to be addressing

his old sparring partner Roger Waters.

All of this stuff you can't imagine Gilmour

dealing with 10 years earlier.

But I think it's not insignificant

that he had a co-writer, and a muse, and a helper

in his current girlfriend and now wife,

who seemed to have been able to

unlock Gilmour in a way.

- Waters always seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve.

Gilmour's much better at hiding things.

And I think for someone that didn't

feel very comfortable writing lyrics,

it was probably very difficult to write about

his own feelings and his own emotions,

and on The Division Bell you certainly get the sense

that he's doing that.

He's quite a closed down individual, as you suspect.

I think the others are as well.

It's a very English thing.

There's something very English about that record

and about the way he expresses those emotions.

♪ The rain fell slow

♪ Down on all the roofs of uncertainty

♪ I thought of you

♪ And the years and all the sadness fell away from me ♪

- When two people have been close,

whether it's in a marriage or in a rock band

and they fall out,

there's always going to be a sense of sadness.

But, I mean, the bitterness of this falling out

far outweighed any of that sort of

melancholic sense of loss that I think

David Gilmour would've been feeling.

- There's a track on there as well called "High Hopes,"

which is easily the best thing on the record,

which Polly Samson had co-written the lyrics on that,

and that is very much about reflecting.

It very much sounds like Gilmour reflecting on his life,

growing up in Cambridge, what had gone on

in the past with Syd Barrett, with Roger Waters.

It very much feels like a man in his 50s

kind of taking stock, taking stock of the world.

- It belongs to a larger tradition of Pink Floyd songs,

which goes back all the way to

Roger Waters' "Grantchester Meadows"

and Dave Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun,"

in which they ruminate and reminisce about Cambridge,

the marvelous Cambridge in their youth,

and everything that was possible,

and lying in the meadow,

and listening to the birds,

and listening to the church bells,

and that it was all ahead of us, and all that.

It's entirely appropriate that

a reminiscence piece like "High Hopes"

should be the final track of the final Pink Floyd album.

♪ The grass was greener

♪ The light was brighter

♪ The taste was sweeter

♪ The nights of wonder

♪ With friends surrounded

- [Voiceover] Released in the spring of '94,

The Division Bell laid to rest the ghosts and turmoil

not just of the last 20 years of Pink Floyd,

but stretching back to their humble beginnings.

David Gilmour as the band's leader and inspiration

had succeeded in rescuing one of the world's

best-loved names from the bitter tangle

of an unsightly and regrettable feud,

and a traditional spectacular tour

brought the curtain down on the band.

♪ Forever and ever

- [Voiceover] As far as all were concerned,

Pink Floyd were now on an indefinite hiatus.

Not officially broken up, but with no plan

for any new material,

the members were content to work on their own projects

and enjoy their lives.

As the band's self-imposed outcast,

Roger Waters continued with his solo career,

taking his masterpiece The Wall around the world

before finally achieving his ultimate goal

and creating the fully-fledged opera Ca Ira.

But to everyone's surprise, Pink Floyd returned

in their full form one last time.

When Bob Geldof assembled the best musical acts in the world

for Live Aid in 2005,

he managed to coax Pink Floyd out of retirement.

And due to the time gone by

and the many gallons of water under the bridge,

there was a definite desire by all parties involved

to reassemble the classic lineup

for this global charity show.

- It's quite obvious with hindsight that for some years

Gilmour and Waters had been dancing around each other

with a view to some sort of reconciliation.

Waters had invited Gilmour to play in Berlin.

Gilmour had invited Waters to play

on the Division Bell tour.

So when Live Aid finally arose, although there was

some initial hesitancy perhaps on both sides,

there had been some precursors to it,

and it was likely that at some point

they would sit down and break bread together

and eventually play together again.

- We had a meeting with Roger

and he wanted to do other songs

and basically David said

"Look, they've asked Pink Floyd to play.

"We're Pink Floyd so we're gonna do these songs,

"and if you would like to play them with us,

"that'd be great."

So he was very humble actually,

and he knew that, he realized that.

♪ A distant ship smoke on the horizon

♪ You are only coming through in waves

♪ Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

♪ When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse

♪ Out of the corner of my eye

- [Voiceover] Pink Floyd played

four of their best-known pieces

for the hundred thousand-strong crowd in Hyde Park.

And the show not only allowed the band

to reunite in public,

but also step out of the formal anonymity

of their spectacular live shows

and simply play the music they were loved for.

♪ And I have become comfortably numb ♪

- The reunion for Live Aid in 2005 surprised everybody.

I think most people by that stage

had accepted that it was never going to happen.

Bob Geldof pulled it off.

- Like many Pink Floyd fans,

I was astonished when the band reunited for Live Aid.

I would've laid money that that would never happen.

And I think one of the most significant

things that happened at Live Aid

wasn't the fact that the band played together,

but it was the group hug that they had at the end of it.

It was quite obvious that there was

genuine emotional feeling between them,

that whatever had happened in the past,

whatever acrimony there had been

was receding into the past,

and that above all else they were friends.

- [Voiceover] The triumph of the Live Aid performance

was captured within the faces of the band

following their set.

Contrary to public demand, however,

there was no other reformation of Pink Floyd.

And following Rick Wright's sad death in 2008,

Live Aid will remain their final appearance.

In July 2010, however, both Gilmour and Waters

reunited at a charity concert for the Hoping Foundation,

where they played a handful of Floyd classics.

Throughout the turbulent final years of Pink Floyd,

the constant friction between Roger Waters and David Gilmour

had threatened to overthrow the band as a whole.

Yet the work they created jointly

showed each of them at their best.

Never as good apart as they were together,

the bruises and scars of such bitter infighting have faded,

and the the pair are reconciled,

not as bandmates, but simply as old friends.